Top 10: Real Life Whovilles

In the wonderful world of Dr. Seuss, Whoville is a wacky place full of silly rituals, a little tradition, some holiday nostalgia, and a few weird people. In How The Grinch Stole Christmas and Horton Hears A Who!, we must imagine that Whoville is like any old town where anyone might live and work. In both Dr. Seuss classics, however, Whoville comes alive through the social rituals and bizarre behavior of the Whos.

Similarly, in the ensuing top 10 real life Whovilles, the towns on this list have become “Seussian” by celebrating festivals and festivities that bring children and adults happily together. Using Christmas, Halloween, Easter, or even the Hindu Holi season as galvanizing forces, these real life Whovilles provide the stage for the town to lift its collective spirit to carry its citizens away.

Number 10

Salzburg, Austria

In Eastern Europe, Christmas is celebrated both privately and communally. Like the Whos singing in the Whoville town square in How The Grinch Stole Christmas, most Eastern European towns create Christmas markets where communities can gather and celebrate the season together. For five weeks before Christmas, the Salzburger Christkindlmarkt takes place in the Old Town among the city’s fortresses and castles, becoming a real life Whoville. If you like the smell of toasted almonds, hot roasted chestnuts, baked apples, and gingerbread, Salzburg will feed your taste buds while the streets echo with the music of Mozart.

Number 9

El Puig, Spain

Spain is a land of strange rituals, and few towns have stranger rituals than El Puig, a small Valencian town. During the fiesta of San Pedro Nolasco, locals gather in the town square around a cucaña, which is, for all intents and purposes, a rat piñata. When the blindfolded men swing their sticks at the cucaña, there is a 50% chance that instead of candy falling out, a dead rat will be the bloody booby prize. If this happens, the man is morally obliged to pick the rat up and throw it at the first person he sees. At this point, all hell breaks loose, as women shriek, stomachs turn and more rats enter the fray. Naturally, the lunacy that ensues is all in the name of wholesome religion, but the appearance is that of a real life Whoville.

Number 8

Hallaton, England

The infamous hare pie tradition in Hallaton, a town in the county of Leicestershire, England, dates back over a hundred years. Legend has it that on Easter Monday, a woman who was running into the path of a charging bull was saved by a hare. In honor of that heroic hare, the woman insisted that the town’s parishioners be given a piece of hare pie and a whole lot of ale. One hundred years later, the tradition is still celebrated on Easter Monday, as beef pie (which has replaced hare pie) is produced at the church gates and hurled at the drunken mob. The mob then blesses a few empty bottles and begins a game of football (read: soccer) against Medbourne, a neighboring town. The ensuing scene is definitely reminiscent of a real life Whoville.

Number 7

Gavle, Sweden

The small Swedish town of Gavle boasts the biggest Christmas goat in the world (if that doesn’t scream real life Whoville, we don’t know what does). While the Gavle straw goat may not have much global competition, it nevertheless stands an impressive 13 meters tall and seven meters long. The ridiculous part of this tradition, which is designed to attract shoppers to the Gavle malls, is that in the 42-year history of the Gavle goat, arsonists have burned the goat 22 times at some point during the holidays. As a result, it is unclear whether the real tradition lies in the goat’s annual erection, or in its destruction at the hands of vandals.

Number 6

Roswell, New Mexico

Roswell markets itself as “the land of enchantment.” Located in New Mexico, the 2008 Roswell UFO Festival marks the 61st anniversary of the notorious 1947 Roswell Incident. On July 7, 1947, after an unidentified object crashed in Roswell, the U.S. military refuted claims that they were covering up the details of an alien wreck. Since then, Roswell has been synonymous with UFOs and conspiracy theories. The four-day festival (July 3-July 6) that was spawned to honor the incident is geared to both alien connoisseurs and to kids, with lectures for the older nerds and the Murphy Brothers Carnival headlining the innocent entertainment.